More than 450 CII members gathered in San Francisco September 8-10 to hear an inspiring roster of speakers and panelists discuss timely, provocative topics at CII’s fall conference. Recordings of plenary sessions can be found here.

Richard Koppes, who during his 10-year tenure as general counsel of CalPERS helped bring about many historic governance reforms, died September 9. While at CalPERS he helped orchestrate an annual list of companies that the pension system highlighted for having unusually poor financial performance and lax corporate governance. That effort prompted many targeted companies to adopt beneficial governance reforms that are now considered mainstream practices. The list also produced what became known as the “CalPERS effect,” which resulted in the companies on the list outperforming the S&P 500.
Upon leaving the pension giant in 1996, Koppes joined the faculty of Stanford University Law School where he served as co-director of the school’s executive education programs and he was of counsel at Jones Day, where he advised directors and management on a range of governance issues. Koppes also was the founder and president of the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys, a member of the American Law Institute and the New York Stock Exchange Board of Governors' Legal Advisory Committee.

On September 15 President Trump indicated support for replacing the current quarterly financial reporting system for public companies with semiannual reporting, subject to approval by the SEC. Relevant to this topic, in September 2018, CII General Counsel Jeff Mahoney hosted podcast interview with Professor Salman Arif, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management, and author of a research paper on “The Dark Side of Low Financial Reporting Frequency: Investors’ Reliance on Alternative Sources of Earnings News and Excessive Information Spillovers.”

The SEC September 10 named James Moloney, an attorney with Gibson Dunn & Cutcher, as director of the Division of Corporation Finance.

At a September 10 hearing entitled “The Fall of ESG: Scrutinizing the Failed Use of Environmental, Social & Governance Standards and the Influence of Proxy Advisors,” Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) acknowledged that proxy access process was originally designed to empower shareholders and provide them with a voice in company oversight, but, he said, “in recent years, it's increasingly become co-opted by activist investors whose primary focus often lies not in maximizing shareholder value, but in pushing narrow political, social or personal agendas.”

Earlier this week, the SEC granted a request from Exxon Mobil for no-action relief for a “Retail Voting Program,” under which the company’s retail shareholders could authorize Exxon Mobil to vote their shares following its board’s recommendations.

In a September 18 letter to the SEC, CII does not object to a delay in the effective date of PCAOB standard QC 1000, A Firm’s System of Quality Control, which was adopted in May 2024.